


After the End

by pirategirljack



Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-03-22 17:09:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 14,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3736891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassie wakes up in the future</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waking

Cassie woke in a room made of cement. She was on a thin, spring-poking bed in a heavy alcove. And she was drugged. She could move, but there wasn't a lot of feeling to anything, physical or emotional. She blinked slowly.

She was hooked up to a heart monitor and IV.

There were no windows.

The lights were dim, blue-tinted, cold. Everything was cold, from her hands to her feet to her heart. She felt like she should be afraid, she knew the fear was there somewhere, but it was like there was a wall between her and her own reactions. A wall she knew.

Morphine.

She turned away from the room and she saw her name scrawled on the wall, mostly hidden by the pillow, in a scratchy sharpie scribble she knew as well as she knew her own handwriting. She lifted her hand, slowly, so slowly, and ran her fingers over the name, traced over and over.

"Cole," she said.

Darkness came down on her again.

***

The next time she woke, there was pain, everywhere, and there were voices near the door, arguing in sharp low hisses that still sounded like violent jabs to her ears and nerves.

"She isn't well enough yet."

"It's your job to make her well."

"And how am I to do that? She's quarantined and you won't let me trough the door."

There was more, but Cassie lost the thread of it. It was just noise, too-bright lights, incessant beeping.

She dove into the darkness herself that time.

***

The third time she woke, it felt more normal. She waited for pain, and when it came it was much less than she'd expected. She tried to move a hand to her stomach before she remembered why, and someone stopped her.

"Try not to move."

Cassie's eyes wouldn't focus. "I can't see."

"We had to remove your contacts, and I'm afraid we have no glasses to offer you in return."

"Jones?"

"Yes. Long time, my friend."

"How long?"

"Thirty years, more or less. A lot has happened since then."

"I don't understand." She tried to remember what was going on, what had happened. There was a red forest, and it stole something from her. There was a standoff. There was Cole, so close to her, saying "see you soon" like the words all meant something else now. He was the only clear thing, a solid image and feeling in the center of the blur.

He'd put her in the machine.

She'd tried to say something to him, but the light took something from her too.

"Cole?"

"Not here. He hasn't been here for some time."

The drugs were leaving her system, but they were leaving her weak and wobbly. Eroded. Tears welled up in her eyes and slid down her face. "I can't stay here."

"And you can't go." Jones shifted on her chair, drew closer, her voice low. "I am glad to see you again, and I am glad Mr Cole thought to send you to me for help, but the timing could not have been worse. We were under attack--and now, you are a symbol of what they do not know. Their confusion is the only reason you are still alive."

Cassie took her time answering. "What will happen?"

"They will question you. It will likely not be pleasant. You must tell them nothing."

"I don't know anything."

"That will make it easier, but I don't know what they want. I don't know if any of us can help them. I don't know how they will ask. Be brave, Cassie."

A knock at the door only a second before it opened, and two tall people--it was impossible to tell if they were male or female--wearing heavy robes and deep hoods came in. They pushed Jones out of the way and grabbed Cassie from her bed, from Cole's bed, and dragged her away.

***

They dropped her off a long time later. She fell heavily to the ground, still seeing the red forest everywhere, the farmhouse flickering in and out of existence before her, a shape moving toward her through the strange, shifting landscape. He raised a hand toward her this time--

Cassie shook her head. This wasn't the first time those visions had gotten her, but it was the first time someone had done it to her intentionally since the first time, and this time, it had been done by a dark-eyed man who smiled tenderly as he sliced deep lines in her chest and ground bitter-smelling dust into them. His voice was smooth and pleasant, and she couldn't remember what he'd asked her.

Or what she'd answered.

Cassie waited long enough to be sure no one else was coming, then crawled over to the bunk, but couldn't manage to get herself off the ground enough to get back into it. So she laid on the solid flat space before it, the cold cement numbing the pain but also helping to push back the strange drugged fever.

There was a drawer right before her, and she worked it open to have something to do. She didn't want to pass out again, and even small motions took concentration, so she focused just on that: getting the drawer open.

By the time she accomplished that, she had steadied enough that she could sit up some, so she did. There were clothes inside, clothes she knew. Cole's clothes. The red and grey shirt. The green teeshirt she'd given him. Aaron's suit, balled up in the corner, covered in dirt and torn.

The suit Cole had worn when she taught him to dance.

She expected that memory to hurt, but instead it was like a light in the darkness, a golden shimmer in the cold-blue-shadows she'd been left in when he saved her and sacrificed himself.

She ran her hands down the lapels the way she didn't do when they were dancing and she'd wanted to. Now, after all this, she wasn't sure why she hadn't. Cole was right; the mission could have waited right then. She hadn't realized she had so many regrets until she had all this time to think about it.

It made her feel better, thinking of how he'd smiled that night.

It made her feel stronger, remembering the music, the softness. This hard-edged concrete place wasn't the world; she had to find a way back to what was.


	2. Halls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassie gets a little freedom

The hooded men came for her over and over. Sometimes they hit her. Sometimes they drugged her. Sometimes they tried to reason with her, and those were the worst times. And in between, she was left in Cole's room without windows and friends.

She lost track of time. It flowed differently now.

She dreamed it was that morning before they caught Aaron, before everything went wrong, and she had just opened her eyes to see Cole watching her wake up. The light there was fresh and golden, the room warm enough that she didn't need the blanket she'd fallen asleep on. In real life, she knew, she'd smiled and he'd smiled back and they'd both known what would come, so they'd gotten up and gotten to work. But in her dream, she reached out and touched his face, and it was so real, she could feel the prickle of each hair along his jaw.

"We should have stayed here," she said. "Just like this. We should stay now."

"We couldn't, then," he said, and he rolled toward her, his hands on her face, her hair, sliding down her neck and shoulders and arms. She thought, for a moment, that they were in a different place, that he was over her, not beside her. That his eyes were scared and intense, not soft and sweet. There was a bright light and a loud noise. But then it was just them again, in the motel, safe. "We can stay now."

She moved closer, until she was wrapped up in his arms, tucked safe into his chest under his chin. "I'm sating here forever."

At some point, Jones woke her with a hand on her shoulder. "Cassie," she said. "They say you can leave your room, if I am with you. How would you like to go for a walk?"

***

It was strange, being out of her room. Being in the halls under her own power, without any drugs or hard hands changing her perceptions. She shivered, and wrapped her arms around herself.

"Ah, you are cold. It's winter here, and the winters have gotten worse since your time. Here--" Jones took her arm and pulled her into a side room, where she lifted a jacket from the back of a chair lined up around a conference table. She knew the jacket. It was military-green canvas, with lots of pockets and a flannel shirt still inside like its lining.

"Mr Cole left it here, and I could not bring myself to remove it."

Jones held it up, and Cassie slid her arms into it, snuggled it down over her shoulders. It smelled like him, like old low-quality soap and sweat and dirt. She pulled the lapel up to her face and took a deep breath, and for just a moment, she saw the golden light and felt his arms around her, and it was like he was there with her.

She almost burst into tears again.

"Please, Dr Railly, don't cry out here. We must show no weakness."

Cassie swallowed the tears and best she could, and nodded as she took several deep breaths, filling her lungs with calming air and the leftover presence of the man she missed more than anything else.

Jones has advised her to act as if she were still recovering, so they walked slowly, arm in arm. Cassie knew the way to the machine, because she'd walked it before, but the rooms held different furniture now, and the lights were all those chilly-blue emergency lights. She felt like she was following her own ghost--or like she was the ghost, following her living body thirty years ago.

"How did you come to be here?" Jones asked.

"We were tracking Ramse, and he led us to the Machine. He was going to come back but things got--tense. I shot him. His guard shot me. Cole shot the guard." Cassie laughed, a watery, choked little chuckle. "The only one who didn't get shot was Cole."

"Unusual, for him." Jones raised an eyebrow and lit another cigarette, and Cassie laughed again, a little closer to a real one. But it didn't last.

How did anything last in this place?

***

They passed the room where the red plants had been, the ones that stole part of her self before she shot Ramse, but now it looked like a storage room, the high lab tables covered in file boxes and stacks of paper. She still shuddered and turned away; the memory of those red leaves, the boiling red sky, the grass almost washed clean of blood...it was enough for her.

And then, near the Machine, Jones brought her to a long, dim room with one wall entirely covered in cork boards. And every one of them was covered in scraps of paper. The room smelled like smoke, and many of the scraps looked half-burned, though the scorched layer was more than half pinned-over with newer pages.  
Cassie saw a picture of Jennifer looking bold and brazen, and remembered how she'd slapped the girl. She probably shouldn't have done that. She didn't really feel bad about it.

She saw a picture of herself, a picture that hadn't been taken yet, from her point of view, with her watch circled. "Is this how you found me? How you knew who to look for?"

"Yes. We had compiled a file of all known details on you. Me Cole studied it extensively before he made his first trip."

Cassie ran her fingertips along the cluster of pictures--the one with the watch, a blow-up of her security badge, a few newspaper clippings and the flier from the talk Cole had found her after. She felt like he was there with her, studying the pages for the first time. Everything looked a little red around the edges, as if leaves were creeping into her peripheral vision. She shook her head.

"This is the brain of our mission, Dr Railly," Jones said. "We were hoping you might be able to help us fill in the gaps."

"What can I do?"

"Tell us everything you can remember."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting a little strange, no?
> 
> \---  
> Also! I've set up a mailing list if anyone is interested: http://eepurl.com/bjHU3T


	3. Decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting serious--but also changing.

Cassie did what she could. She filled in gaps and corrected details. She added to the clusters of information already pinned to the walls and made notes based on her knowledge of locations, people, what she'd seen. She gave them her side of everything since Cole had first shown up in her car.

Surrounded by Cole's world, she did her best to help. Hours passed, and the leafy red edges of her vision swayed like a wind through the Red Forest, making the floors look slick with blood, the corners crowded with leaves and branches only half-hidden in the shadows. She ignored them as long as she could, but their movements distracted her, threw her stories off, and Jones noticed. 

Cassie pushed away from the table to get a closer look at the board--this was the part she was good at, making connections between things that didn't seem to connect--and her knees gave out. She must've hit the ground, but it was all fuzzy, a mix of leaves and hard cement and worried hands and someone dressed all in dark, envloping clothes. It didn't clear again until Jones and the tall English scientist, Adler, had her sitting on a bed in the infirmary.

Jones was fussing, but all Cassie heard was the swish of leaves. And then she felt a sharp pinch in the fold of her arm and things came clear again. She looked down to see Jones pulling a syringe needle from her vein, the injection burning a line along her blood vessel. A line she'd seen a dozen or more times before on Cole's arms; when he was admitted to JD Peeples, they'd called them "track marks" in his file and assumed he was a junkie. She knew better.

She ran her fingers over the new scar, and for just a moment, she felt closer to him. The redness faded out, replaced for just a second with clear gold light, then her vision settled and she was herself, in a room, with Jones.

"What happened?"

"You collapsed."

"And you gave me the serum?"

Jones was quiet a moment, putting things away. "Do you realize how close you came to dying, Cassie?" She said.

Cassie's hand went to her stomach, where the bullet hole had long since healed, but the mark was still there, the tightness of scar tissue. The memory of pain. "I have some idea."

"I don't believe you do. You were shot, and bleeding badly, internally and externally. The bullet had hit a vein. Minutes more and you wouldn't have made it. Mr Cole injected you with the earliest and least tested version of my serum, and it shouldn't have worked at all. The Machine he sent you through was unfinished, barely calibrated, didn't yet have the capability for tracing or returning like it does now. If it was the same machine, it would have snatched you home by now, long since, but it has not--and so you are still here. Out of time."

"Can I ever get back?"

"I believe you can. But I have no idea if returning you to your time will reset you there, or if it will always bring you back here--effectively switching yours and Mr Cole's times of origin. But here is the most important part. The Ghost Soldier will not leave us to our own devices forever. Sooner or later, they will come to some conclusion on what to do about us, about the wrench we have thrown in their plans, and on that day, I fear I will no longer be able to protect you. I hope to have you back in your time before then."

"But the Machine is locked off. We can't get to it."

"Yes. It's a problem. One we must resolve, and soon."

"If--if I splinter home--will it do to me what it did to Cole?"

"Unclear. Your condition is unique. The Machine was never meant for you, and coming through as you did, from the unfinished machine, with the incomplete serum, already so close to death and having already been subject to the Red Forest...We are in unknown territory here."

The edges of her vision were going leafy again, but for now, they stayed back. "What does it mean?"

"I cannot say." Jones found a blanket, and handed it to Cassie. "Rest now. You can stay here for a time."

Cassie took the blanket, but didnt move to lay down. She was breathing deeply, trying to make sense of everything in her head--to separate what was her and what was everything else. Jones patted her shoulder, and went to move, but Cassie caught her hand when she realized that the low beeping she'd been hearing was a heart monitor. She turned and saw a woman with thick dark hair laying as still as a corpse in the dim back corner of the infirmary.

"There's someone else here?"

"Ah. Max. Mr Ramse shot her much in the way you were shot, shortly before he left. It took all our skill to save her, and she remains too weak to attempt any other treatment." She hesitated, her eyes looking haunted, and fished around in her pockets for a cigarette that she didn't light. "If Mr Cole hadn't given you the injection, it's likely you would have been much the same." She hesitated again, longer, and then, carefully and quietly, said, "She and Mr Cole were close, I think, some time ago."

That last hit Cassie like a blow, and she didn't even notice Jones leaving her. She and Cole were close. Cole had someone back home all along. 

Of course he did.

This was his home.

But...

But Cassie remembered how he'd looked when he leaned over her so closely as he put her in the Machine, how afraid he was, how deep the worry went in his eyes. She remembered the warmth of him, the tremor in his hands on her face. All the extra meaning he crammed into the words he'd said to her every time he'd left since she'd met him, "see you soon."

And yet he hadn't kissed her.

Cassie felt tears wobbling in her chest, and before she lost it entirely, she went over to the still form on the bed, squeezed her cold hand for just a moment, and said, "He's left us both here, now."

The walk back to the room seemed to take forever, and she was shadowed the whole way by a soldier in some halls and a hooded man in others. She held it together until the door was closed on her. She took a dozen deep, gulping breaths and pulled Cole's coat around herself, unrolling the sleeves and pulling her knees up into it. 

Something rustled in the inside pocket, and she fished out a folded-up wad of three papers and a picture hastily stapled together. The picture was of her, the same one that had been on the board, though this one looked like it might be the original. A corner of the picture had started to wear away, and someone had drawn the line of her jaw back in with a soft, smudgy pencil line.

She hiccuped, trying to keep hold of herself, and turned the page.

The first sheet was a print out from a printer that must've been ancient even in her time, a copy of the file Jones had mentioned. It listed what they knew of her--her age, her height, eye and hair color, the make and model of her car, where she'd lived and where she might be found, dates they could find her on. And below that, in Cole's handwriting, the list had been extended to include her favorite color, the name of her usual order from three or four restaurants they'd ordered from. Then, further down, more intimate things--what her shampoo smelled like, how gently she'd cleaned his wounds, the color of the shirt she was wearing when they met. Things Cole wanted to remember, specifically, even though he had the best memory of anyone she'd met.

She'd never seen him write anything down; he always just recalled things perfectly.

But he'd written this stuff down.

The other two pages were a messy sort of diary, scribbled notes and details of the leads they'd followed, one or two sketches that were never finished, a map of her neighborhood and the layout of her bookshop. Circled things that he'd meant to look up, most of them songs or books or pop culture references. Memories written over each other on every scrap of paper, with little to no attention paid to the lines on the pages torn from what looked like one of her notebooks.

She wasn't supposed to ever see these pages.

But she was glad she had.

And they entirely undid her.

Cassie folded them back up along the same lines, and put them back into the pocket with shaking hands, and then curled up on her side and let the tears come, finally, washing through her like a storm. She cried until she had no more tears to shed, until her chest hurt from sobbing, and when she finally opened her eyes again, she saw her name scrawled on the wall again.  
In her mind, she heard Cole's voice, calling her.

Calling her home. 

She'd been here for ages, but she had a time machine. She could go back to any time, and erase all of this. And she would.

She would get home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one got long because I was typing it on my phone and somehow none of it saved at all, so I had to rewrite it. Ugh, tho.
> 
> Mailing list! http://eepurl.com/bjHU3T


	4. Max

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassie and Max have some things to talk about

Cassie was determined to be strong. She'd never live long enough to get home if she wasn't. And she wanted to get home more than anything else.

The hooded men and Deacon didn't come for her anymore; if anything, they seemed to have decided that she was an anomaly, something to be contained but not something to worry about. They kept guards outside her door, but they didn't stop her from moving around anymore, so she took advantage of the freedoms she had.  
Cassie joined Jones's team, working most days in the boardroom, reconstructing events. The injections seemed to have clarified her memory, and she remembered finer details, sometimes entire pages of Peters' journal, or files that has been destroyed by Cole's paradox or Aaron's need to clean up whatever he determined to be a mess. Together, they reconstructed a puzzle out of fragments. Cassie disappeared from the record because she wasn't there to be part of it anymore, and traces of Cole and Ramse fell off the map, as did traces of Aaron and Seki, the financier behind a number of businesses attached to the Army. But Jennifer's traces grew after she took control of her father's company, and as the timeline progressed, she grew more and more unstable, bending the labs and resources to weirder and weirder uses.

Other names popped up, Jonathan Arbor, Emily DeNotta, more about Olivia--though they kept those notes off the wall, where the hooded Ghost Soldiers couldn't see them. They mostly kept to the Machine room, like they were waiting for something, and didn't bother the scientists, but better safe then sorry.

"You have a gift for this," Jones said.

"Making things make sense? I suppose I always did. It's why I went into virology instead of medicine. Less people to deal with, more problems to solve, potentially many more people to save." Cassie rubbed her eyes; the leaves were still there, at the edges, but they hadn't risen up and knocked her out in a while. The ceiling still looked like a roiling red sky, though, and sometimes she had to remind herself who she was talking to--a scientist in a lab, not a man in a plague mask-slash-space suit. Jones, not Cole or Aaron or Jennifer of her mother or whoever had decided to come haunt her.

She wished tea still existed in the future. They had truly terrible coffee, but no tea. She could use the calming ritual of tea-making.

Cassie found herself wandering the halls. The future was frigid; she wasn't clear whether it was something to do with the sudden decline in the population, or if it was a natural winter, but she was cold all the time. She shrugged deeper into Cole's coat, and rolled the sleeves down over her hands. The folded pages crinkled in their inside pocket, and she patted them. It was almost a ritual now, like touching a rosary had been for her grandmother. It calmed her.

She found herself in the infirmary.

The girl, Max, was still asleep, but Cassie'd barely reached the bedside when her dark brows drew together and she shifted fitfully, her eyes moving around behind her closed lids. The beeping of her heart monitor picked up pace, and she started moving her arms around like she was fighting someone off. Cassie had seen enough nightmares to know one when it was right before her, and the way this was going, she was worried Max would hurt herself.

"Max," she said, and caught the girl's hand. "Max, you're having a dream. It's okay."

Slowly, Max drifted back to wakefulness. "What--what happened? Who're you?"

"You were shot. By Ramse. I'm sorry. Jones says you been out quite a while."

"Ugh, everything hurts. Who're you?" And since she'd asked twice, Cassie had to answer her.

"I'm Cassie."

"Cole's Cassie? From the past?"

Cassie's heart fluttered at that. "Yes."

"How the hell did that happen?"

"It's a long story."

Max tried to sit up but crumpled back down to the thin cot before Cassie had to push her back. "It looks like I've got time."

"Let me find you something to eat and drink, then I'll tell you everything."

Cassie wasn't sure why, but she meant what he said; maybe it was just that she wanted someone to talk to. 

Or maybe she felt like she owed this woman some sort of explanation, for whatever reason.

It took longer than expected to tell the whole story. Max mostly listened without comment, though she did remark once in a while about when her own experience overlapped--by way of Cole. Then Max told her whole story, how she'd been left behind, and how she'd defected. How Cole had told her, a long time ago, that he'd found someone else, and how what they'd had might as well have been a century ago, as far as Max was concerned. A lot had happened since then.

For a moment, they both just looked at each other--and then they laughed, briefly, but honestly. 

"So Deacon's gonna want us both dead, probably." Max said.

"Probably."

"We'll have to find a way out of this place then. Don't worry, Cass, survival is what we scavs do best."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a wandering story this is becoming! But also? It's fun to explore the world. And Max was saved in another story that I didn't post for Theme Week, and this is now basically merged with it, so some of that will come up later as the story unfolds.
> 
> \---  
> Mailing List! http://eepurl.com/bjHU3T


	5. Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The facility isn't safe anymore

The serum was in desperately short supply, but Jones agreed to give Max a half dose to help her heal, and within a day or two she was able to walk and carry a gun. She and Whitley were the only fighters left, but they were the best ones, and they developed a plan.

Cassie kept up the pretense of helping the scientists with their research, but mostly she was keeping an eye on the Ghost Soldiers, making sure they were still in the control room. They stood f hours at a time, clustered around the Machine, waiting for something they obviously thought should've come already, that hadn't arrived. All that had come through the Machine was her, and she wasn't who--or what--they expected. Cassie was just glad they'd decided to ignore her; she didn't know how many more beating she could have taken. 

She had a new appreciation of Cole's fortitude, though. She knew he'd taken a lot more beatings than she had; she'd cleaned him up after more and worse ones.  
"You miss him," Max said. "You get this look on your face when you're thinking of him, half fondness, half crushing sadness."

"Am I that obvious?"

"Sort of."

"Yeah. I miss him."

"Our plan, if it works, will get us out of here so they don't kill us. It won't regain control over the Machine. You understand that, right?"

Cassie nodded, trying to make it a smooth, even gesture like any other, and not a forced, jagged thing. "I understand. I won't be able to go back."

"Not yet."

"And it'll be more dangerous outside. For you, especially. Cole said you died in the plague--that means you're not immune like the rest of us. We do t have to worry about strangers too much--but you will."

"Frying pan, fire," Cassie said, and Max made that face that Cole always made when some cultural thing had dropped out of use between their times and went over his head. "I know. But I can't stay here."

"No you can't."

***

Their moment came when the Machine finally kicked into life. As soon as the incoming alarm went off, Cassie grabbed the bag she'd packed with the very few things she owned and bolted to the meeting point with the others by the back tunnels. Max handed her a gun and a mask, Jones had an armful of files, Whitley had more guns than one man should ever need to carry, and the very few others had whatever they could grab before leaving.

"Did you see who had arrived, Doctor Railly?" Jones asked, and Whitley opened up the tunnel entrance, but before Cassie could say that she hadn't seen anything, except that the Soldiers seemed pleased about this one, gunfire erupted behind them.

"Scavs!" Whitley called, and he sprayed the hall with cover fire while everyone got into the tunnel. He almost didn't make it himself, but me met them just as they got outside, and ducked sideways against the wall of the facility to stay hidden. Cassie saw the loaded look that passed between Jones and Whitley when he rejoined them, saw Jones squeeze his hand, carefully avoiding his wounds there.

They ran in a string against the wall to the corner where the woods had crept up across what had once been open space like a parking lot or a lawn, then fade into the brush. There were gunshots behind them, but if anyone followed, they followed at a distance. 

Cassie had never walked so far in one day in her life. They trekked through the woods until hours after nightfall, and didn't set up camp until they'd found a hollow that would shield their fire from view. It was hours of being on alert, hours of avoiding fallen branches and twisted roots, of remembering to keep her gun up and her pack centered on her back, of breathing trough a mask that smelled like old cloth and mold. Cassie was just glad it wasn't a gas mask; she might have gone off the deep end if it had covered her whole face. 

Exhaustion made the trees around her look red, made the sky look red, made everyone look like a plague doctor.

By the time they stopped for the night, Cassie was so exhausted she fell asleep the second she was horizontal, and she slept harder than she'd slept since she was drugged and bleeding after her first arrival.

She dreamed about that morning again, about being in Cole's arms an staying there.

"We're not in the facility anymore," she told him, and he looked the way he had when he'd put her in the machine, panicked, sharp, terrified but determined.

"Where are you?"

"In the woods. Jones says she knows where we're going."

"You can't be outside the quarantine, Cass. You're not immune."

"I couldn't stay inside, either. They were going to kill us."

"Who?"

"Men in cloaks with hoods. Maybe women also, it's hard to tell. White faces, like ghosts. They wouldn't tell us what they wanted, but they only left us live this long because I put a crimp in their plans."

Cole smoothed her hair from her face, his hands rough but his touch so gentle. "Be careful, Cassie. I'm coming for you."

"I know you are."

And this time before he faded away, he did kiss her, and she kissed him, and it was so real Cassie almost believed it was an actual memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are going places now!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the world

Living rough was worse than Cassie had expected, but also, in some ways, was better than wandering halls and sleeping in a bunker. She missed the pillow that smelled like Cole and his handwriting on the wall there, but she was happy to have the sun and the sky and trees that were definitely not unnaturally red. It was winter here, but nearing spring; the buds on the trees were green, and the snow was mostly melted. 

Max knew where to find food and water. Whitley knew how to defend their perimeter. And Jones knew where they were going. She had a fat file full of the letters she and Cole had written--and a second file full of ones they hadn't written yet--and she was retrieving more files and envelopes periodically when they stopped.

"This is how I know you will get home, Cassie," Jones said. "Your being here has not made these letters disappear, so you must get back at some point. And when you do, you and Mr Cole are reunited."

Cassie's heart clenched in her chest, and Max looked away from whatever her face showed. "Thank you," she said.

"No thanks needed. But when you return, do be sure to note how you do it to make our lives easier here."

Cassie managed to smile a little, the way Jones did. "I'll make sure."

***

A few days after they left, they made it to a city--and then a street--that Cassie knew. It was abandoned, dirty, weathered by thirty hard winters without any maintenance, but she knew where they were. "My bookshop," she said.

"Mr Cole seems to be sentimental in his stay in 2015."

The destroyed front windows had been boarded up at some point, but the end of the world had come less than two years after that night, and no one had ever gotten to the repairs. That fact upset Cassie more than she'd thought it would. She had hoped, though she hadn't known she'd hoped it, that after she and Cole were reunited, they could rebuild, start over. But this place, her safe place, had never been rebuilt.

"It has been a long time since I was here," Jones said.

"Me too, it seems."

"Not very defensible," Whitley said. "No wonder they found you."

Cassie had no reply to that. She led them around the back, in case anyone was watching the front, and jimmied open the door.

Inside, it was like a different world, and Cassie almost fell to the ground and cried. They had rebuilt. Would rebuild. Inside, the shop was like new, despite being abandoned for so long, despite the thick layer of dust. The checkered floor still had the starburst burn-marks and the outline of Cole's body--and she knelt down to touch it like she had that day, when she'd gone back to him and found him alive, and for just a moment, she thought she saw the outline of his face there, before the leaves rustled at the edges of her vision and she shook her head to clear it.

The desk was back where it had been, the bulletin board was against the shelves, and the kitchen with its little table and small counter were all how she remembered. But the divider between the kitchen and the rest of the space was new, a different design, and carved into one side were the letters C+J. She ran her fingers over them as everyone filed inside and shut the doors again.

There was no power, of course, and with the big windows boarded over, there wasn't much light, but Cassie knew which cabinet she'd always kept her emergency supplies in, and found a few candles and an old LED lamp that somehow still worked, and they set up shop there in her own home.

It was surreal, to say the least, a collision of time-frames that she couldn't quite get a hold on in her mind. It helped her homesickness some--and made it worse. It was like walking on uneven ground; she was never sure where her feet would land. She found chairs and pillows and two folding tables, and whatever else she could while Jones checked her notes and found the last cache of files--right behind the divider with their initials, in a hidden compartment.

"I can't believe no one raided this place in all this time," Cassie said, and Whitley made a face that clearly agreed with her. He didn't think much of their location, but he and his few men set up sightlines and guard posts all the same.

"This is not--was not--a highly populated area when everything fell apart. Likely, most of it had already been evacuated or abandoned beforehand, when the Safe Zones were set up," Jones said, but Cassie could tell her mind wasn't on her response, it was on whatever was in her new file. Cassie both did and didn't want to see it. She already had a recording she had to make; she didn't really need more things she had to remember to create before she found out whether they'd managed to divert her death in 2017.

Such cheerful thoughts.

"We can't stay her long," Whitley said. "Did you find what you need?"

"I do not know yet. We'll stay here for a day or so while I read the files."

"What're you looking for, exactly?" Max asked, sparing Cassie from having to ask herself. 

"How we can get Cassie home--and how we can regain our own home."

"Well, that could take forever," Max said. "Hey Cass," and Cassie tried not to feel the twinge in her chest at that name, since there was only one other person who had ever used it, "lets see if we can scrape up some food. Leave the eggheads to their work."

"Stay close," Whitley said. "Take Evans with you." 

"No thanks, boss." Max handed Cassie a gun, despite the fact that she already had one in the back of her pants, under the jacket's long edge, and pulled two knives from her pack. "The fewer of us there are, the better, and Cassie looks like she needs something useful to do."

"I'm useful here."

"But more useful there. Come on."

"Cassie--" Jones said, then paused, and seemed to swallow whatever she was going to say. "The virus is not airborne, but it is virulent. Do not touch anyone, should you meet them. Not even for a second. Stay hidden, if there's conflict."

"I'll be okay," she said, and she hoped it wasn't a lie. She was used to putting herself in the way of deadly viruses, but she wasn't used to this one. And she knew it got her in the end. But she also knew that she hadn't seen a single other person since they'd fled into the woods, and she was starting to feel crushed by all the memories here--the ones she already had, and the ones they hadn't made yet.

She went with Max.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Cassie go looking for food

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last! An update! I'm super-sick (and so is everyone else in my house) but I thought I'd upload this before the meds wear off and I can't sit upright anymore...

It was nice, Cassie thought, being in a city again. The woods were rough, dangerous even if there wasn't a single other person around for miles, and even after several weeks, alien. She was a city girl, and she felt more like herself in a city landscape--even one boarded up or burned down like this one. It was still surreal, still familiar, but it was also, alarmingly, starting to look normal to her. She'd already been here too long.

Max didn't know the area, so Cassie decided where to go. Things should have changed in thirty years, but the neighborhood had basically been shuttered and abandoned not long after her time, so the landmarks were mostly the same. There were restaurants every few doors up and down the street, a grocery store one block over. Max led the way to each, but Cassie knew where they were. The first restaurant was a burned husk; the next had been long since looted, judging by the damage the long winters had done. Cassie looked up at the faded Chinese menu and tried very hard not to think of handing Cole a fork when he was eating with his hands, and how he'd done both the way a child does, efficiently but without flair.

It was good having something simple and clean to do. All they had to do was find food.

"It looks like there's animals living here. Watch the front and I'll set some traps," Max said.

Cassie took up a position by the busted front windows.

"You hold a gun pretty well," Max said as she miraculously rigged a snare out of stuff laying around on the floor. "Cole teach you that?"

"Yeah."

"Looked like his style. He's not subtle, but he gets the job done."

Cassie didn't know what to say to that. He wasn't subtle; he also wasn't a sledge hammer like the scavs she'd seen with Deacon. 

They moved on to the next place, found some random cans and jars that looked like they wouldn't be made entirely of botulism, then headed out to the grocery store. It was only a block away, but there was no direct route, and they had to go around the long side of the block to get there. 

About two thirds of the way down, when they were so close getting back to the bookshop would be more trouble than continuing on, Cassie suddenly got a really bad feeling just as Max brought her gun up and said "I don't think we're alone."

"Should we go back?"

"Too late." Someone stepped out of a doorway ahead of them with a gun, ten another person, then maybe ten more; Cassie heard footsteps and guns being readied behind her, too.

"Well," the first man said, "if it isn't visitors. We don't get many in this day and age."

"We don't want trouble," Max said, and Cassie added, "We're just looking for food."

"Ain't we all." He eyed them both, looking at them far too closely and slowly from head to toe, his mouth getting a little too lascivious for Cassie's liking. Cassie tightened her hands on her gun and saw Max do the same, but they were ridiculously outnumbered and Max was still injured, even if she acted like she wasn't. Cassie only had basic hand-to-hand skills, too; she hadn't had a chance to take more than a few self defense classes before everything got crazy.

The red leaves at the edge of her vision rustled, and it reminded her of the day she'd shot Ramse. She could shoot this guy, too, the leaves said.

The man moved closer, and she and Max both raised their guns to aim at his head, which caused all the others to tighten their focus around them, but the man's hands were up, his own gun hanging negligently from one of them.

"There's not a lot of ladies left in the world," he said. "Maybe we can make a deal."

"Not that sort of deal, asshole." Max said.

"And what sort did you think I was making?" He answered, but his face had gone sharp and his eyes were fierce where they rested on Max. Cassie saw his hand with the gun tighten just a little--and then a kid, couldn't have been more than ten or twelve, rushed out of an alley and whispered something urgent in the man's ear.  
Everything changed. He lowered his gun entirely, put it away, and waved off the others that faded into their shadows without so much as a squeak of protest, and within seconds, they were alone in the street again, with only the man and the boy.

"My boy Johnny says The Woman wants to see you, so you're to be given a free pass through our territory."

"What Woman?" Cassie asked. 

"One of the Daughters," the man said, and dropped his arm around the boy's narrow shoulders. "She saved my son. We owe her." He stepped out of the way and gestured down the street the way they'd been going anyway. "Around the corner, in the old grocery store. Mate she can help you with your food problem, if your visit pleases her."

"How do we know this isn't a trap?" Max said, her gun still up, but Cassie had already started to relax her hold on hers. She'd only heard the slightest of whispers about these Daughters, but she gathered there was a lot of superstition and even more complicated truces wrapped around them. The scavs at the facility talked about them like they were ghosts. She laid a hand on Max's shoulder.

"This doesn't feel like a trap now."

Max spared her a glance, read her face with sharp dark eyes, and lowered her gun all at once. But she still didn't trust this guy.   
"If we get screwed over, I'm coming back for you."

"Don't worry. If something goes wrong, she'll come for me herself. You don't want to make enemies of the Daughters."

They walked down the street until they were out of hearing range, and then Max moved close enough that Cassie could hear when she said "This doesn't feel like a good plan."

"We can't risk people touching me, Cassie said, "and we still need food."

"Not if the Daughters are in charge of it. They're nomads, keep out in the wilds. Why're they here?"

"I guess we'll find out."

They came to the wide doors of the grocery store, and there were women in dark clothes with big guns on either side of it. They had punky hair and one had some complicated tattoos and piercings. 

"Greetings, Cassandra Railly and Max of the Seven," the woman on the right, a tall, dark-skinned woman who looked like an Amazon, said. "The Woman has been waiting for you."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plots thicken!

"And who is this "woman" to us?" Max asked. She hadn't brought her gun up, but she obviously didn't trust anything about this situation.

"Our Mother," the other guard said, and then opened the doors. "You first," she said to Cassie, "it's you she waiting for."

Cassie had a sneaking suspicion who she was about to meet, but the actual meeting was something else entirely. Inside the grocery store, they'd set up tent poles and drapes of fabric, what looked like a hundred candles, and a mismatched selection of pillows and rugs and ottomans. And sitting in the middle of it all was a woman with long, wild, dark hair wearing long black clothes, and a peaked hat.

"Really, Jennifer? A grocery store?"

The hat tilted up and a half-crazy grin showed before her eyes did, as clear and bright as ever, despite all the years between them now. "The setting is immaterial," she said, her voice scratcher but still the same. "They came for food, get them some food," she said to her closest minions, who scuttled off, leaving the three women alone.

"You...know the mother of the daughters?" Max asked, her tone trying to be neutral but coming across as a mix of alarmed and awed and disbelieving. 

Jennifer grinned again, and said, "A long time ago not yet, we were-are friends. Even though you slapped me."

"You deserved it."

"I didn't think so then. Maybe I still don't now? It's inconclusive, but the fact remains and the fact is you were a friend when I needed one and I've waited for years and years and years and years..."

Cassie remembered all at once why she didn't like having conversations with Jennifer--and that, technically, they'd only had two and both had been snippy and short. "What are you talking about? We aren't friends. You sent me and Cole to the facility. We almost died there."

Jennifer looked appropriately chastised; maybe time had taught her some sense after all. "No. We weren't then. You had Cole and his otter eyes only looked at you and that was a problem. And the Woman only wanted him dead and she--she said--there were things she did--" She got up suddenly and came closer to Cassie. She moved to bring her gun up, but Jennifer blocked it and Max's gun at the same time and got very close to Cassie's ear, practically inside the circle of her arms. 

Max jerked her gun away and brought it back around, but Cassie blocked it this time. She sent Max a glance that she meant to convey that Jennifer was crazy but less dangerous if you don't stop her, but she wasn't sure if Max got it. She did, however, move her gun just a little.

"I know how to get you home," Jennifer said, right in her ear, her hands in Cassie's hair. "I sent you to this shit hole and I can send you home and I owe you--for something you haven't done yet but I've lived with for so so long now. It's heavy and stupid and I'm tired of carrying it around. I'm the Woman now. Olivia is gone and dead and I'm in charge and I have wrongs to right, cages to trade for forests, bridges to un-burn..."

She stepped back a little further with every word, her hands trailing off the edges of Cassie's coat and ponytail and fingertips.

"How? How can you get me home?"

"With the Machine, silly."

Max scoffed, but Cassie answered. "The Ghost Soldiers have the Machine. It's why we're here, not there."

"Technicalities," Jennifer said, and waved her hand in an exaggeration of dismissal.

"Kind of a big technicality, Jennifer."

"It only seems big! There's twelve of them but even now when no one goes to school, twelve isn't prime but thirteen is!"

"What the hell are you talking about? Cassie, what is she talking about?"

"I'm taking about changing time! They wanted you to think it was all immutable but that's only because they were making it that way! Keeping it that way! Moving all the pieces around on the board they thought they could see, but they didn't see this did they?" She jabbed at Cassie's chest, right where the folded pages still were, safe in her pocket, though Cassie wasn't sure she knew that. "They didn't see you! Here! And him, there! Messing up their plans!"

"Cole?"

"No, idiot. Enki. Ramse! They were so sure you'd kill him and then just poof-disappear! But that's not what happened."

"He's alive?"

"God, you're still stupid, you don't see! Yes, he's alive, Otter eyes changed things! Back then, their plans are all out of date, they're blind thinking they've got extra eyes! I can get you back. They think I'm dead, too. But you need to know some things first. And I need to talk to your pet mad scientist, one mad scientist to another." She smiled, a wild, excited grin that made Cassie's stomach knot with dread...but also gave her an insane sort of hope. "Take me to your leader," Jennifer said, and held out her hands like she was surrendering to a cop.

"Cassie..." Max warned, but Cassie had already made her snap decision.

"Bring us some food, and I'll show you where she is."


	9. Jennifer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassie and Jennifer talk.

Max pulled Cassie aside, and Jennifer let them go, but watched Cassie over Max's shoulder. "This is a really bad idea," Max said, "even just thinking about it. We can't take her back to Jones. She's insane."

"She always has been, but she's a sane sort of insane."

"Now you're nuts! She's the Mother of the Daughters! They're vicious and weird and more dangerous than Deacon and the West 7 ever were!"

"Do you know that for a fact?"

Max took a half step back, and looked the way kids look when they're caught in a lie. "Well, I've never seen it for myself, but it's known. Everyone in the Seven knows about these women."

Cassie didn't want to argue Jennifer's case--didn't want much of anything to do with her at all, really--but if she could get her home... Even if it was a long shot, shouldn't she take it?

She decided all at once that she should.

She moved away from Max, took a deep breath, and went back over to Jennifer. "We'll meet her on neutral ground. Let us take the food back and tell her that you want to meet her; give us time to convince her. Then we'll all meet up again in the park down the block, an equal distance from both of our camps.

"Um, paranoid much?" Jennifer said, making wide-eyed faces and rolling her eyes.

"Um, cautious much? I don't know you in this time. She doesn't know you at all. It's this way or not at all." It was Harris believe that this ragged old woman was Jennifer, younger than her and flashier--but it was also hard to believe that the version of her before her now was thirty years older, almost. That'd make her not yet sixty, maybe even barely fifty-five, but she sounded and acted as flighty and sharp-edged as ever.

"Ugh, fine, whatever. Pleased to help, etcetera."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you helping me at all?"

"Because you're the key!" And she was suddenly very close, her face only inches from Cassie's, and Max brought her gun up again--but again Cassie waved her off. "You're the key we've all been looking for and you don't even know it. But you're incidental, too, a means to an end, a gear in the machine. Maybe you know that, I don't know, sometimes you're not as dumb as a whole wall of bricks."

"Jennifer--"

"He loves you." Jennifer said in a totally different voice, and the Fire went out of her. She seemed to shrink and looked even older than the years had already made her. "He loves you and he needs you back. He can't do what needs doing by his lonesome, and everything is out of order and all the straight lines are looped and crooked." She sank back down and lowered the brim of her wide hat over her face again. "Take your food, whatever, we've got piles to spare. Talk to your pet mad scientist. You have two hours."

Jennifer wave a hand and one of the Warriors came out from the stacks with a wheelbarrow full of food. Cans, tubs, boxes, like Cassie had expected, but also fresh fruits and vegetables that couldn't have come from here, and even a loaf of bread. 

"Bread!" Max said and grabbed it, tearing off a chunk and stuffing it in her mouth before she managed to master herself and shutter her expression again.  
"Go," Jennifer said.

Cassie took the handles of the wheelbarrow; Max was a better shot and a better fighter, so she needed to be free to act if they needed it. But they didn't--the Daughters guarded their trip all the way to the edge of the men's block, and they may as well have been the last people in the world as far as they were concerned. They didn't see a single other person until they reached the back door of Cassie's shop, but Cassie had no doubt that both groups knew exactly where they'd gone.  
"You have returned," Jones said when they made it inside. "And you have brought provisions! Where did you find this?"

"Can we talk? In private?"

Jones raised her eyebrows, but didn't argue; Cassie led her up the stairs to what had once been her bedroom. A window had been blown out by a storm up here, years ago by the look of it, and the room was a rotted mess, but the furniture was all where it always was. Cassie perched on the edge of the bed frame, remembering how the bed was old and creaky but comfortingly soft in her time, and was about to begin her story when her eye caught on a framed picture on the nightstand. It was faded, stuck to the glass and wrinkled by moisture, but she could still see it: her and Cole, their arms around each other, their cheeks pushed together. They looked happy, like they'd been caught in the middle of laughing. This Cassie had longer hair, this Cole had a new scar down his cheek, and it was like they were strangers.  
All at once, she felt the weight of this empty world crushing down on her like it hadn't since she first got here. She raised a hand to hold her breaking heart together a and felt the folded pages in her pocket, and she missed Cole so much she thought she'd shatter or explode or evaporate from it.

"Cassie?" Jones said, kneeling before her and squeezing her hand on the edge of the picture frame. "What is it? What has happened?"

"I need to go home." She said. "I was starting to think maybe I could handle it here, but I can't. I can't stay here."

"No," Jones agreed.

"We met Jennifer Goines. She's still alive, and she's the leader of the Daughters. She wants to meet you--and then she says she can get me home."

Jones was quiet a moment, and her hand was still, but Cassie saw her weighing options and choosing her words. "Then we will meet."

"Thank you."

"You are not the only one who has made discoveries, however. Come back downstairs with me. You will want to know what we have found."


	10. Almost home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jennifer has a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think...Okay, i'm always like "don't predict how long a story will be" but I feel like this is more done than not, so maybe a few more chapters? Then it'll merge with Before the End and I'll see if I want to keep going on an alt Season 2.
> 
> Also, this is sort of long. That's the difference between writing on my computer and writing on my phone!

The scientists and soldiers were sorting through the food and Max was telling them about their adventure to find it when Cassie and Jones reached the bottom of the steps. Cassie hadn't looked at anything when she first arrived, but now she saw that they'd set up a respectable recreation of the boardroom in the time they were gone, with the long board laid out over the bookshelves on three walls of the room. It was a mess, but it was always a mess, and there was a sort of order to the scraps and notes that Cassie understood now. It was the same sort of fractal order that Cole applied to their own notes.

Back home.

They'd moved the desk closer to the middle of the floor, and the files Jones had pulled from the niche in the wall were laid out across it, edge to edge, covering the whole surface.

"Come see," Jones said.

The files were all open to what looked like random pages, but when Cassie looked at them all together, she saw what she wouldn't have seen if she'd only been looking at the pages individually. A secret message: Trust Jennifer This Time. It was written diagonally across the four-file by three-file rectangle that was almost perfectly covered the desk, written in the blank spaces between words and diagrams. It started in her handwriting. It ended in Cole's.

"It was an accidental discovery. A chance of the light and the way someone laid the pages on the table. But it seems to pertain to your news."

"News?" Adler said, going cautious all at once.

"Doctor Railley has met the Daughters. They wish to speak with us."

"You cannot be serious," Adler started, but Whitley was already lifting his pack, checking his gun.

"When?" Whitley asked, cutting off whatever Adler had been about to say.

Cassie glanced at her watch, which miraculously still worked, though she's had to reset it to local time. "In an hour. Little more. At the park up the block. Neutral ground."

"Why?" Adler said, more than simple inquiry in the word. He sounded like he was questioning everything in the world.

"She says she knows how to get me home."

***

Cassie left the others to argue. Jones was already determined to go, and Whitley was determined to protect her. 

"I'm coming too," Max said. "I'm with you till the end."

Cassie squeezed the other woman's shoulders and smiled shyly. She didn't know what to say about such a vote of confidence, so she didn't say anything. Everyone was still arguing when they left, guns in front and behind, and headed up the road to the park. It was coming onto sunset when they reached it to find Jennifer already there, standing like a black-stone statue with four heavily armed women; two of them were the ones from the door of the grocery store, Cassie noted. The light was the warmest and goldest she’d seen since she’d landed here, almost as golden as the light that had delivered her, and it seemed like a sign. It made the red of the leaves around the edge of her vision fade back some, made them stand in less stark contrast to the rest of the world.

“So,” Jones said as soon as they got reasonably close, “we have all arrived. What is this that you need to say to me so desperately.”

Jennifer leapt into movement so suddenly that Whitley and Max almost shot her, and only the armed women’s similar gun-raising kept them from doing it. Jennifer didn’t seem to notice at all; there was no hesitation as she rushed at Jones, knocking her cigarette from her hand and her own hat from her head as she threw her arms around the blonde scientist. “It’s been ages and ages and ages and I’ve missed you!” Jennifer wailed.

Jones looked alarmed--but, Cassie noted, not like she didn’t expect this. Not like she didn’t know what she was talking about. Awkwardly, she hugged Jennifer back, and slowly, Whitley lowered his gun. A breath or two later, the others did the same.

“I can send her home,” Jennifer said, “Otter Eyes’s favorite girl, I know how to do it.”

“How?” Cassie said, moving closer now that she knew there was no threat. “What do you need?”

Jennifer took barely a moment to throw her a shrewd look before turning back to Jones. “She said your lab is overrun. The little birds I have out there say the same, so I know you’re not lying, not this time. It’s the Seven. And the Twelve.”

“Who are those assholes?” Whitley asked. “They came out of nowhere and took over way too easily. I don’t take kindly to what they did to me.”

Jennifer swarmed him, then, and cradled his hand in hers, petting the bandages as if she really did feel sorry about it. Whitley winced, but didn’t pull away; enough time had passed that maybe he could handle it. Or maybe he was just that stoic. Cassie almost felt like smiling at him, but it was like she was too heavy for a smile just now. The golden light made her feel strange, and it was lancing through the trees and making her eyes hurt.

She refused to fall apart this time, no matter how bad the leaves got.

“They have no subtlety,” Jennifer said. “They think they’re better than everyone, that no one matters. I used to think like that. I thought everything was justified because no one mattered. It’s taken me a looooonnnnngggg time to see the error in those ways.” She turned back to Jones, all business. “You’ve been looking at time wrong. It’s why things are so hard, and why it was so easy for them to stop you. But Otter Eyes changed something. I felt it when he did, and I know what he did.”  
“What did he do?” Jones asked, her tone exactly that of someone in a mental institute, trying to calm a patient. 

Jennifer pulled back from her, all the glee gone from her expression. “Don’t do that, don’t use that voice. That voice isn’t yours.”

Cassie edged a little closer to them so she could get between them if things went wrong. “Jennifer,” she said, in as close to the annoyed tone of voice she usually used with her as she could, “just spit it out already.”

“That’s a real voice. Good. Good, that’s right.” She paced around for a second, and when she came back to her spot before them, she looked more together. “Cole saved Ramse, even though everyone who knows time knows Ramse died there. You killed him, Cassie, and you died there, too, and Cole was never heard from again. I tried to find him, I did, I looked for ages, but I never did know where he went. But that’s not what happened. Cole went back. He changed it.”

“How?” Jones said.

“He’s trapped there, the machine thinks he’s from there, but he’s still out of time. And now you are, too. That’s two of you who can do it. He’s strong enough. Are you?” And she looked at Cassie so hard that she felt like she was standing there naked.

“I am now.”

“Good. Let’s go. We can take my caravan back.”

“What?”

“Ugh, keep up! We’re going back to the lab. They’ll listen to me. I’ll tell them I’m sending you home to fix time, and they’ll believe me, and then you can bust up all their shit.”

Jones lit another cigarette. “Why will they believe you?”

“Twelve isn’t primary. I’m the thirteenth.”


	11. The road home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's much faster getting back than going out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I can sort of see the end now! 
> 
> Also, I just realized I haven't named all the chapters. Oh well!

"This is preposterous!" Adler said the second they told him what the next step was. But it didn't stop him from packing up when Jones made it clear that they were going. He hid his notes from Jennifer, pulling things from the walls in handfuls and complaining about how they'd only just arrived and gotten set up.

Jennifer didn't seem to notice; she prowled around Cassie's shop, running her hands over countertops and along the edges of shelves, pulling books down to flip through them without reading anything. Cassie thought she heard her mutter something about how there was more here, but it was so mixed up with her usual babbling, Cassie didn't have the energy for it. 

Jennifer had never been here; she'd said as much on the way here from the park--"you never let me into the house, made me sit outside like a stray cat!"--so she let it slide. Let Jones or Max handle her crazy now; Cassie was going home.

She had no idea how, no idea when, but they were headed back toward the lab before midnight, everyone packed into wagons and carts with the Daughters. Every time she thought about getting home, she was filled with a warm sort of relief...and with a wild mix of nerves and fear and worry and impatience. She'd done alright by herself here, but she knew she'd never belong here. 2015 was her home.

Cole was her home.

And she had no idea what he's been doing since she left. Did he worry about her? Did he pace around at night like she did? Was he trying to find a way to get her home? 

No sooner did she ask that question of herself than her hands started to tingle, and the bones in her forearms ached. For a wild, half-insane moment, she thought she was about to Splinter, that they wouldn't have to send her back because she'd go back on her own, finally. She hadn’t realized she’d been waiting all this time for the splinter that never came. But as suddenly as it came on, it ended. Nothing but a ghost of a sensation left.

Cassie rubbed her hands together and looked at them in the dim light of the single lantern on the wagon's side. Her nails were a mess, and she had new scars and calluses. But they were still her hands.

She folded them up and tucked her arms around herself against the night chill.

***

They made it back in a fraction of the time it took to make it out--days instead of weeks--and Jennifer talked the whole way. Cassie wished that was an exaggeration, but as far as she could see, Jennifer didn't sleep or eat, she just talked. About the past, in a jumbled and mixed up way that gave Cassie almost no insight. About the future that even she didn't know. About old pop culture. About how everyone needed to give Cassie a wide margin and no one was allowed to touch her. About life on the road.

Often, all of this at once.

And the worst part was, because of the injections Jones was still periodically giving her tiny doses of, she remembered all of it. The time-travel serum didn’t do anything to make it all make sense, but it kept it there in her mind, in as sharp a focus as anything else she’d seen or done since she was sent through the machine, and she hoped it would prove useful later...or that the serum would wear off and allow her to forget it. To forget all of this. She’d been close to getting used to it, the isolation, the fear, the hunger--the quiet, constant desperation--and that scared her. Now that she was going home, she wanted none of it.

She only wanted Cole.

And maybe a cheeseburger.

On the third day, Cassie decided to pretend she taken up smoking so she could wander off a little with Jones when they paused the carts for rests.

"I'm going to kill her," she said.

"She's mostly harmless," Jones said. "Time has been no kinder to her than to any of us, and her lucidity has suffered, but she isn't all gone."

"She's not all here, either."

"She never was."

“You knew her. Back then, before.”

“I knew all of you,” Jones said, her gaze fixed on some distant point in the direction of the lab. They couldn’t see it yet, but the caravan-mistress, a woman named Kai that Max seemed to have bonded with almost instantly, said they’d be there before the day was out. “Because of you,” Jones continued. “If you hadn’t brought me in to save Mr Cole, I wouldn’t have met any of you.”

“Do you regret it? Knowing about us?”

“No. I had no innocence or idealism to lose. I was always like this. But I regret that any of this happened to begin with--the virus, Project Splinter becoming a necessity. All of it.” She stamped out her cigarette and brought out the pack, deciding whether she wanted another.

Cassie wrapped her coat closer around herself against the cold. “I don’t regret it. Not like that. If none of this happened, I’d never have met Cole.”

“And you would have been well and successful. Perhaps married.”

“But without any real purpose.” Bitterness welled up in her throat. She hadn’t thought of Aaron in weeks, but thinking of him now, in the context of how they’d almost gotten married...Would he have turned out to be as controlling and as narrow-minded without the virus revealing that? Would they have been able to be happy? Cassie doubted it. Some other thing would have shown them who they really are, and she would have seen his true self too late.

Jones turned to her, and buried her hands in the big pockets of her coat. “If we succeed, that is likely the life you will have--the uninterrupted life.”

“I know.” And she didn’t like it, but she hadn’t figured out that part yet. She had the barest inkling of an idea, the tiniest fragile hope: they’d both been through time now. Maybe time would change around them and leave them with each other. 

It was too fragile to say. Jones knew more than she did, and she didn’t want anyone to crush that little ray of light. It was holding back the red leaves. Around them, the wind blew through the normal forest, and shook all the trees in that way that it does when rain is coming, and it was too cold to stay out when it got wet.

“We should go in. Our journey is almost done.”

“Almost.”


	12. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassie is closer than ever to home, but not there yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, moving throws you off a good writing pattern, doesn't it? But I'm basically settled now, and I'm back, and I'm gonna try to finish this baby and Before the End and merge them back together! I hope I can get the reunion right when we get there!

They arrived to a lab that looked the same as the one they’d left--except for the line of white-faced soldiers blocking the road. They were expected.

Jennifer wasn’t the least bit worried.

And Cassie had had exactly enough of her.

While the soldiers ushered them all inside--and this time, not a single one of them laid a hand on any of them--Cassie focused on making herself small and inconspicuous. She was as dirty as everyone else, the grime ground deep under her fingernails, in the creases of her hands, in a gross ring around her neck. She was a doctor; she was trained to be spotless and was naturally clean by nature, and it bothered her--but it was camouflage, too. This muddy, she could be just another Scav or Daughter or beaten down scientist. They knew her already, of course, but that was a lifetime ago, she was a different person then.

Jennifer was talking about how she was Prime, how with her they were all Prime, that she was a what they were waiting for and they’d lost the details over the years and the end of the world. “It’s okay, it happened to everyone,” she said, “even me, once. Or twice. Or fifteen times over twenty eight years. But it always comes back, it always always reminds you who you are.”

Did Cassie imagine a sharp look sideways at her when Jennifer said that?

They didn’t need her now.

Jennifer swept into the boardroom in a flutter of robes and shuffling scientists and Scavs and armed women, and Cassie ducked back into the shadows. No one noticed. No one stopped her. Maybe she was more of a Scav than she thought.

She waited against the wall, cold and blank under her hands, until the whole crowd was in the boardroom, and then she went to the next door down the hall, where the Machine stood in its hangar-sized space. She wasn’t sure what she intended to do there, but the room was empty and as quiet as a room full of ancient computers and a giant machine could be, and she really just wanted to see that it really was real, that it was functional. That she really did have a chance to get home.

To see Cole.

She’d seen the Machine a few times when she was imprisoned here, of course, but what she remembered most clearly was the way it had looked when she’d gone through it. That day was seared into her memory with violent clarity, everything perfetly preserved and unfading--except for whatever had happened in that lab where the red plants were. That version of the Machine was clean and sleek and bright, the lights all gold and lit up, panels covering the ugly wires. All the parts made for it, not improvised and patched in.

That Machine was a different creature. This was the one that had brought Cole to her. It was the one that would bring her back to him.

The leaves rustled in her peripheral vision, and there in the absence of voices and bodies, she almost knew what they were there for, almost heard what they were trying to tell her--or trying to make her do.

Jones’s hand on her shoulder brought her back with a wrench that almost felt physical, and she realized her feet hurt and her knees were half-locked, making movement difficult at first. How long had she stood there?

“Cassie. Are you well?”

“I--I’m just a little overwhelmed. It’s so close. But everything feels more up in the air than ever.”

“Jennifer had made a promise. She’s is many things, but not a liar.”

Cassie remembered her face after she’d told them to come her all those years ago, and wasn’t so sure. She’d had plenty of time to put the pieces together. Jennifer was the one that told the Monkeys where they were. 

But Jones sounded like she knew what she was talking about, and she had lived through all those years between.

“We’ll get you home, Cassie.”

“Sooner, rather than later, I hope.” Cassie looked back toward the hall between the Machine room and the boardroom. “What’s going on in there?”

“A lot of talking. A lot of not making sense. I should be there, listening, learning, but I needed a break. Jennifer speaks their language, but they talk of things none of us know and it is…”

“Headache-inducing?”

“Quite.” She lit a cigarette, and Cassie waited, as they had on the road. “I’m going back to my lab, to be sure our hosts haven’t ruined everything. Care to join me?”

Cassie held out a hand in a “lead the way” sort of gesture, and Jones ducked her head in a mocking sort of bow. Max met them at the door, and walked with them.

“I’m joining the Daughters,” she said, quietly, as she fell in beside Cassie, so that she was on one side and Jones was on the other. Guarding her.   
“You are? Why?”

“This place isn’t what it was. And I’m tired of all the crap men cause. The Daughters do things differently.”

“You sure?”

Max smiled, and it was real, but it was also bitter and a little hard. “As sure as I’ve been anything since I decided to leave the Scavs. Besides, Deacon’s here, and I can’t stay under the same roof as him. Not ever again.”

Cassie thought of his hard fists, his hallucinogens, and shuddered. “I don’t blame you. When?” 

“As soon as you’re home.”

They reached the lab, and Jones opened the door. She made a noise that seemed to be half annoyance and half pleased, and Cassie followed her through to see that the place was a mess--but it seemed to be the sort of mess that happens when you evacuate quickly, not when someone ransacks your place. Jones went to a smaller room off the side, and unlocked a still-locked door to reveal a piece of equipment bubbling with some greenish fluid. A tank in the middle held what looked like almost a gallon of it.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“The serum,” Jones said. “It’s been synthesizing since we left. I had hoped they wouldn’t have a need to disturb it. I am glad that this once, my hopes proved true.” She laid her hand on the tank almost reverently, and it was all Cassie could do to not do the same. “With this, we can get you home even if Jennifer cannot make a deal.”

Cassie took a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing her hands not to shake, her knees to keep her upright.

Home.

It was the best word she’d ever heard.


	13. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cole and Cassie are reunited, and Before the End and After the End become the same story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part happens at the same time as the last chapter of Before the End! After this, they're the same story, and I'll probably come back to that at some point.

“Get some sleep,” Jones said. “Jennifer says she will send you home tomorrow. She knows at least one temporal coordinate when you will be sure to find Mr Cole.”

“And what’ll happen to you?”

Jones smiled, just a little, and Cassie thought she was aiming for wistful or sad, but there was too much knowing in her eyes. “Don’t worry about us. We have plenty to keep up busy.”

Max squeezed her shoulder and led her back to Cole’s room, and took up a position outside the door when she closed it. 

Cassie laid in the bunk and traced the scribbles on the walls with her fingertips until she fell asleep. Morning came almost too soon, and Jones took her to the Machine. Cassie had no idea what any of it meant, but the scientists obviously had a system and a routine. She followed Jones to medical and she held out her arm for the shots they offered her. The color of it was different at this end of the timestream, and the needle that injected it was smaller and less awful, but it had that same weird burning through her veins, the same jittery effect. 

Cole had told her once, when they were waiting for something to happen, that Jones called it being loose in time, and for the first time, she really understood what he’d meant. Before, she’d been half-dead and almost entirely in shock--now, she was completely sober, and she’d been getting small doses already. This big one felt like being peeled up off the surface of the world and laid back down in a slightly different and not quite stable position. Close to where she’d always been, but not right.

She clenched and unclenched her hands as she waited for the Machine to boot up and get ready.

“Mr Cole was terrified on his first trip back,” Jones said to her. “I thought he might have a heart attack from that alone.”

“I’m glad he didn’t.”

“Me too, Dr Railly.”

And then it was time. She climbed up the stairs to the chair and though her legs were wobbly, they took the steps solidly and she made it. But now that it was happening, every doubt she’d ever had came back to haunt her.

“What if I’m too late?” she said.

“We’ll aim as close to the exact time Jennifer has given us as we can.”

“That’s not exactly an answer.”

“It’s not an exact science.”

Cassie tried to smile, and Jones held her hand for a moment. “Will I come back? Like Cole always did?”

“No. We have not given you a tracker, so there will be no homing signal.” She hesitated a moment, and then, slowly and with a very specific look directly into Cassie’s eyes, she said, “If you were to have a tracker, it would be for your own time, not ours. But that hasn’t happened.” Cassie clearly heard a “yet” at the end of the sentence, though she didn’t say it.

“Thank you. For everything.”

“You are more than welcome. Send my regards to Mr Cole, and continue your mission in your time. Make it easier for us now that you have seen how we work here.”

“I will.”

A siren blared for a second. It was time. Jones move back, and the light grew stronger, a shimmering blue-white light. Waves or force pushed against Cassie’s face and chest and she closed her eyes. The light grew, and every nerve in her body felt like it had turned to glass and shattered--

\--and she landed hard on rain-soaked cement, the air knocked out of her, but all her parts where they should be.

It was night. It was cold. A shiny black car was pulling away, just turning around a distant corner, and another was still parked. She was directly in the middle of the cones of light from the headlights.

A door opened, and feet came down out of the car.

“Cass,” a familiar voice said.

All at once, Cassie snapped back to herself with a sharp intake of breath that managed to get her to her feet and moving. All she could see was Cole.

She almost turned and bolted, she was so crazy with adrenaline and fear and needing.

Instead, she rushed toward him, and he met her half way, and when she threw her arms around his neck, he gathered her up in his and lifted her right off the ground, spinning her around to burn off their shared forward momentum.

“Cas,” he half-breathed and half-sobbed into her shoulder, “Cas, you’re alive.” He set her back on her feet and pushed his hands into her hair to move it back from her face, and her hands did the same for him, and for a moment they just looked at each other as if they’d both been blind and now they’d just learned to see again.

He looked tired, thinner, his hair longer and his scruff thicker, dark circles under his eyes and new lines between his brows--but he was smiling at her, and his hands were so warm, and she was sure her heart was beating in exact time with his. And then she kissed him. 

He wasn’t even a little bit thrown. Whatever had happened on his end had only made him as ready for this moment as she was, and he met her lips with his, and they dived into each other like fish returning to the sea.

Cassie couldn’t get enough of him. Her hands were in his hair, pulling at his shoulders and his lapels, her body tried to merge with his.

If they hadn’t been outside, it might have.

Someone tapped the horn and Cassie almost jumped out of her skin--but Cole held her and didn’t break her gaze, and she couldn’t have cared less about the horn or the car or anything else.

“If you’re done acting like desperate teenagers, we have things to do,” Ramse’s familiar voice said out the driver’s side window.

Cassie spared him just the slightest glance before looking back at Cole. Cole didn’t even give him that much. He made an annoyed sound and got back inside the window.

“You’re wearing my jacket,” Cole said, his face soft and full of that wonder that she so loved to see. That’s the face she’d missed for so long, and she cupped his cheek and ran her thumbs over his cheekbones.

“Yeah. It’s cold there.”

“It’s cold here. Come on. Ramse wasn’t lying; this is kind of an important moment.”

“How long has it been here?”

“Eight weeks, three days, nine hours,” Cole said without pausing to figure it out. “For you?”

“Five months, ten days and fifteen hours.”

“Timey wimey,” Cole said, and Cassie laughed out loud. Trust Cole to have discovered fictional time tavelers when he was done with his own travels.

“You’ve been watching TV,”

Cole smiled and pushed his cheek to hers again, sighing like he hadn’t breathed in all those eight weeks, all the tension going out of his shoulders. She tightened her arms around him. “There’s a lot of downtime when you’re not jumping straight to the important parts,” he mumbled into her ear. His lips brushing her skin made her shiver with something entirely different than cold.

“This is what I’ve been saying,” she said.

When he met her gaze again, his face was serious. “You’re really okay? You didn’t get--you didn’t get sick…?”

“No, not even once.”

He touched one of the fading scars on her chin, the one that started where her lip had been repeatedly split during Deacon’s interrogations. “But they hurt you.” His voice was calm and even, but there was deep, dark violence behind it. Her opinion of the matter was just as dark, and his anger resonated with her, but she didn’t care about that right now.

“That’s over now. I’m home.”

“We both are.”

Ramse stuck his head out the window again, “And we’d better get home before something drastic happens and we lose this edge we just gained.”

“Edge?”

Cole smiled, and led her by both hands to the back seat of the car. He had to walk backward to do it. but he did it anyway.

“Lord,” Ramse said, and rolled his eyes so hard his head rolled too, “now I’m your freaking taxi driver.”

“A lot has happened since I last saw you,” Cole said as he helped her up into the back seat. “Let’s get you caught up.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure how I like the start of this, but it's getting where I want in part two, so I'm going to keep going.
> 
> The plan is to post two chapters a week--there might be more, but I'll try not to have less--as reward for getting my regular work done!


End file.
